...an award-nominated Irish blog on Irish history and Irish politics-from today and yesterday:all 32 Counties !Updated a number of times each week . (Mirror site here)

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The '1169...' crew will be 'closing up shop' later on this week for our Christmas break ; we will probably be absent for about one week , but it could be less : depends on when the funds run dry !

BRITISH 'JUSTICE' : THE EMERGENCY LEGISLATION AND THE INFORMER SYSTEM.......First published in the booklet ' STRIP SEARCHES IN ARMAGH JAIL' , produced , in February 1984 , by 'The London Armagh Group' .

So far , all the informers have been men , but no doubt attempts are being made to recruit women .

Strip-searching can also be seen as an attempt to break the morale of women held on remand on the 'word' of informers - the aim being to persuade the women to plead guilty , thus corroborating the informer's 'evidence' .

Finally , for a male prisoner , the thought that his mother , sister or wife may be arrested and imprisoned if he refuses to inform , is made additionally persuasive in the knowledge that women prisoners are currently been subjected to the harshest prison regime in Armagh for many years .

If we look at the treatment of prisoners in Armagh Jail in its full political and legal context , then two vital points emerge : firstly , most of the women in Armagh Jail have arrived there via a system of 'justice' which denies them the legal rights which , outside the Six Counties , have always been regarded as fundamental to British 'justice' ; secondly , it is likely that the increasing harshness of the prison regime , including the use of intensive strip-searching , is closely tied in with the policy of using informers in show trials .

Within one day of having met Sinn Fein re the hunger-strike issue , Fr. Denis Faul was 'spinning' that meeting to suit his own anti-Republican agenda : another Catholic chaplain to Long Kesh prison , a Fr. Murphy , having being 'briefed' by Faul , was telling Thomas McElwee , then about forty days on hunger-strike , that at the meeting the Sinn Fein rep , Eamonn McCrory , had described the hunger-strikers' situation as "...hopeless.. " : when challenged on this , Fr. Denis Faul dismissed ever having said such a thing to Fr. Murphy ...

But the circumstances of the meeting with Fr. Denis Faul where this challenge was made would tend to indicate that he may not have been truthful ; that meeting itself , beginning at about 11.30PM on the evening of Tuesday July 28th 1981 , and continuing into the early hours of the following morning , was called on the basis of a proven lie by Fr. Faul which was told simply to bring that meeting about and in circumstances most favourable to his purpose - earlier that evening , at a meeting in Toomebridge with relatives of most of the hunger-strikers - relatives whose emotional and moral exploitation was the other 'prong' of Fr. Faul's offensive - he stated that in a conversation he had had with Brendan McFarlane , Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks and representative of all protesting prisoners , McFarlane had said that Gerry Adams , Vice-President of Sinn Fein , had the power and authority to call off the hunger-strike . Faul urged the relatives to press Adams into doing that .

That untrue assertion led to the meeting late that night in Sinn Fein's offices in Belfast .......

(MORE LATER).

THUGGERY : THE UGLY FACE OF SINN FEIN THE WORKERS PARTY ....... From 'MAGILL' magazine , April 1982 .

THE MURDER OF SEAMUS COSTELLO , OCTOBER 5 , 1977 :There continues to be speculation about this act and there have been suggestions that Seamus Costello may have been killed by members of his own organisation : certainly there had been talk among Belfast members of the INLA in the months prior to this killing about "...getting rid .. " of Seamus Costello , by which at least some of them meant killing him .

This was because of Costello's failure to acquire arms and explosives in the quantities that he repeatedly promised and his refusal to allow anybody else take over responsibility for it or even to be jointly involved . However , we have been informed by a number of people who were members of the Official IRA at the time that Costello was in fact shot by a senior member of the Official IRA .

The only doubt that surrounds the operation is what degree of authorisation did it have : certainly , when the IRSP feud broke out in 1975 and especially after the killing of Billy McMillan in Belfast on April 28 , 1975 , plans were made by the Official IRA to kill Seamus Costello and the OIRA Army Council gave explicit authorisation for that . We have been informed of this by people who were members of the OIRA AC at the time .

It also appears that there was no countermanding order made to the OIRA AC but there may have been a general 'understanding' ' to let sleeping dogs lie .......'(This piece on the killing of Seamus Costello will conclude tomorrow.)(MORE LATER).